How to Wait for Your Son
by insert-original-name-here
Summary: BOOKVERSE. Random oneshot. Between Hiccup and Snotlout's births Stoick thinks about children and how he still doesn't have one. Sorry for the lack of good title and summary. Rated it T, but I think that's just because I'm being uber-paranoid and I'll probably take the rating down sometime if I remember.


**A/N: Hey, this is in BOOK VERSE but maybe you could almost look at it as film cannon too if you really want and it's just a random thing that I was thinking about and then quickly wrote, partly because there really isn't much book verse fanfiction and partly because it was on my mind. I'm not quite entirely sure why I'm publishing it but I am.**

**Disclaimer - I own nothing. Of this. I just wrote it.**

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Stoick the Vast, oh hear his name and tremble ugh ugh did not look like a happy bunny.

He didn't, in fact, look like any kind of bunny, but he didn't look like a happy Viking either.

He looked more like a... concerned Viking. Maybe, if it had been possible for somebody as Viking-y as Stoick, he would have looked like a deeply-pensive-in-a-distantly-worried-way Viking. With a little bit of cross Viking thrown in. But that didn't really come across under his predominant appearance as an angry ginger haystack with an angry Viking hidden inside.

He _was _the Chief of the Hairy Hooligans.

And Valhallarama was about to leave on another Quest.

It wasn't that he didn't _want_ her to be Questing. She was very good at it, and it was an honourable – not to mention profitable – thing for a Viking to do, especially the wife of the Chief. And she liked it. She had in fact, delayed leaving for too long already and she was missing it. It would be best for both of them if she left.

The Problem was that she wasn't leaving a child behind. Again. They had wanted a child for a long time. They had been married longer than Baggybum had and his wife had produced a suitably beefy son a few years ago. They _needed_ a child, to be the Heir of the Tribe.

They needed one soon. Stoick had even heard people suggesting that they might _never_ have one. Give them long enough and they'd start looking at Snothead-thingy and wondering whether he'd be a good Heir instead. That was why Valhallarama had stayed so long, so that they could produce their own Heir, but there still didn't seem to be one forthcoming and she _needed_ to go Questing.

At least she had assured him this would be a short Quest. She'd be back soon.

"Stoick!" The Chief turned to see his brother striding jovially towards him across the Hooligan Harbour, his child following at a determined half-rush "No luck with the baby?" Stoick didn't know quite how Baggybum expected him to _know_. Granted he didn't have any expert knowledge on how you knew whether your wife had a child inside her but he had a general idea and he didn't think it was something you just found out as soon as it happened.

Now, of course, he was going to spend weeks, maybe months, wondering whether she actually did, and whether she would come home early if she did, and when she would actually find out. He hoped she had a wider knowledge on the subject than he did himself. To make things simpler – Stoick preferred things when they were simple – she just shook his head.

Great Chief that he was, he couldn't help but wonder if maybe they really would never have a child and somehow some of his worry made it past the ginger haystack into visible form.

Unfortunately sympathy wasn't one of Baggybum's strong points, however many times the two had saved each other's lives in battle, so he settled for muttering something mostly unintelligible that seemed to simultaneously contain the phrases 'don't worry' and 'sissy girly' before offering his brother's arm a friendly punch. Then he saw the bright side and added reassuringly "we still have my Snotlout. He'll make a great Heir."

Said potential Heir chose that moment to make a squealing noise that sounded like it might have come from a deadly between a cockerel with a throat infection and a whiny but tough cat and show his boredom by making a general disturbance until Baggybum threw him a bludgeon that he had got for his Birthday the week before. He then proceeded to test it with enthusiasm on his own helmeted head before moving onto whichever other bits of the village looked like they needed bashing.

There was a son Stoick would be able to be proud of. In fact he was annoyingly Vikingy and an annoyingly perfect son. Why couldn't Stoick have had a son like that already? He needed a great strong Heir like that – although maybe one with slightly smaller nostrils – not Baggybum.

In that moment, he decided his brother wasn't being useful and bopped him on the nose. Valhallarama would have a child, one even stronger and bigger and beefier and tougher and – more Viking-y.

Stoick's son would be better than Baggybum's. There was no doubt.


End file.
